A Shooting at the CDC and Soaring Measles Cases: Are we listening?
Fear-mongering vaccines has dire consequences.
By Jeff Nesbit
An alarm bell is sounding, and we’re the ones who set it off.
Not only are children being sickened by unnecessary exposure to viral infections, but the vaccine conspiracists are infecting the minds of dangerous individuals. On Friday, police say a young man critical of the covid vaccine opened fire at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, firing more than 500 shots and killing a law enforcement officer responding to the scene.
And, last week, the CDC confirmed that measles cases in America have hit a 33-year high and released the damning explanation. For the first time in recent memory, vaccination coverage for American kindergartners has fallen for all reported diseases, according to CDC vaccination data released July 31.
In the year 2000, the United States officially eliminated measles. It was a monumental public health achievement, the culmination of a decades-long, science-driven effort.
Today, with at least 1,333 measles cases and 29 outbreaks reported so far in 2025, that victory is slipping through our fingers. This is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made crisis, born of misinformation and policy failures, and it is putting our children at risk.
The science behind our past success is simple to understand—but one that has been largely forgotten because vaccinations have eradicated deadly diseases over the decades. It’s called herd immunity. Think of it as a shared shield that protects an entire community.
When enough people are vaccinated, it creates a firewall that stops a virus in its tracks, preventing it from finding vulnerable people to infect. For a virus as contagious as measles, the scientifically established threshold to maintain this firewall is 95% vaccination coverage.
According to the new CDC data, national coverage for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has fallen to 92.5%. The shield is being broken before our eyes.
This isn't a statistical blip; it’s a five-alarm fire. The data shows a clear and disturbing trend of parents opting out of routine immunizations. Last year, exemptions from one or more vaccines for kindergartners rose to 3.6%.
This is a national problem. Exemptions grew in 36 states. In states such as Idaho and Utah, they have soared to a staggering 15.4% and 10.3%, respectively.
These communities have become tinderboxes, waiting for a single spark—an infected traveler, a chance encounter—to ignite a major outbreak.
And who are the primary victims? Our children. Of the measles cases this year, two-thirds are children and teenagers, with nearly 30% under the age 5.
We, collectively, as a nation need to face an unsettling truth. We need to abandon the dangerous misconception that measles is a harmless childhood rite of passage. It is a serious, unpredictable disease. Beyond the fever and the rash, a measles infection can lead to pneumonia, lifelong hearing loss, and other severe complications.
Most terrifying is the risk of encephalitis, a swelling of the brain that occurs in one out of every 1,000 cases that can cause permanent brain damage or death. Even more insidious is subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a rare but universally fatal degenerative brain disease that can emerge seven to 10 years after a child recovers from measles.
The choice not to vaccinate is often framed as a choice. Thanks to the strident anti-vaccination views of President Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the administration now officially characterizes a decision to vaccinate children entering kindergarten as a “personal one.”
Making matters even worse, Kennedy and Health and Human Services recently decided to disinvest in mRNA technology development—a colossally misguided decision that jeopardizes vaccine development for deadly infectious diseases and cancer. This, too, places our children and our communities at grave risk.
The mRNA divestment “risks stalling progress in some of the most promising areas of modern medicine,” Jerome Adams, Trump’s first surgeon general, told Axios. “Walking away from this technology now would be like pulling funding from antibiotics after penicillin or from computers after the microchip. It's short-sighted and puts us at a disadvantage globally.”
These moves by Trump’s HHS to deliberately halt vaccine development and challenge vaccinations for school-age children present a profound and dangerous fallacy. Forgoing vaccination is a public decision that has dire consequences for others.
It is a choice that tears holes in our community’s shared shield, putting the most vulnerable among us at risk: infants who are too young to receive the MMR vaccine and children with cancer or compromised immune systems who cannot be vaccinated and rely entirely on the immunity of the “herd” for their safety.
The scientific consensus on the safety and efficacy of vaccines is overwhelming and global. This is not a debate with two equal sides. It is a case of established medical fact versus debunked, disproven, and dangerous misinformation that spreads on social media.
We are witnessing the predictable and preventable resurgence of a vanquished disease. We cannot afford to let one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century unravel. The path forward requires a recommitment to science and community.
Parents should trust their pediatricians and the vast body of scientific evidence over a social media algorithm. Protecting our children from plagues of the past is a fundamental duty. It is a collective responsibility we fail to uphold at our own peril.
Jeff Nesbit was the assistant secretary of public affairs at HHS during the Biden administration.
I don't have children, but of course I was vaccinated as a child. I resent parents and the mental midgets who influence them to withhold preventive vaccines from their kids and themselves, therefore, making them possible vectors of disease. My father had polio as a child and went on to become a doctor. It is the influence of survivors and protectors like this that needs to prevail in modern America, not the backwards thinking of Kennedy, a mentally disturbed man with no science or medical training, and the people he directs.
This is basic, folks. This is basic, Trump. This is basic, parents. And so is death, if you prefer it. I do not.
As a person with type one diabetes since 1969 it really scares me that people are turning their backs on established proven medical science facts. Especially from a nut job like RFK Jr who does not have any education in medicine. If you were told that when you buy a new car you never need to do anything to it to keep it up and running in tip top shape, would you believe that? C'mon people, use your brain!